Top aide of impeached South Korean president pleads for investigators to halt detention efforts

Impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol's top aide pleads with law enforcement to abandon efforts to detain him.

The top aide of impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol pleaded with law enforcement on Tuesday (January 14, 2025) to abandon their efforts to detain him over last month’s martial law imposition, as authorities prepared a second attempt to take him into custody.

In his statement, presidential chief of staff Chung Jin-suk said Mr. Yoon could instead be questioned at a “third site” or his residence and claimed that the anti-corruption agency and police were trying to drag him out like he was a member of a “South American drug cartel.”

However, Yoon Kab-keun, one of the president’s lawyers, said Mr. Chung issued the message without consulting them and that the legal team has no immediate plans to make the president available for questioning by investigators.

Yoon Suk Yeol has not left his official residence in Seoul for weeks, and the presidential security service prevented dozens of investigators from detaining Mr. Yoon after a nearly six-hour standoff on January 3.

The Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials and police pledged more forceful measures to detain Mr. Yoon while they jointly investigate whether his brief martial law declaration on December 3 amounted to an attempted rebellion. The National Police Agency has convened multiple meetings of field commanders in Seoul and nearby Gyeonggi province in recent days to plan the detainment efforts and the size of those forces fueled speculation that more than a thousand officers could be deployed in a possible multiday operation. The agency and police have openly warned that presidential bodyguards obstructing the execution of the warrant could be arrested on site.

The anti-corruption agency and police haven’t confirmed when they would return to the presidential residence, which has been fortified with barbed wire and rows of vehicles blocking paths. But Chung said he understood “D-day” to be Wednesday, without specifying the information he had.

Anti-corruption agency and police officials met with representatives of the presidential security service Tuesday morning for unspecified discussions regarding efforts to execute the detention warrant for Yoon, the agency said. It wasn't immediately clear whether they any kind of compromise was reached.